Successful Man

A successful man is one who can build a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.

David Brinkley

DON'T SERVE TIME, MAKE TIME SERVE YOU

Time can't be managed. What can be managed
are your activities and how you spend your time.
You always have enough time if you use it wisely.

Set your priorities for goal attainment.
Always try to put first things first.
Most goals are not achieved because people put second things first.

All time management begins with planning.
In all planning you make a list and set priorities.
While you're reviewing your priorities, ask the question:
"What's the best use of my time right now ?"

Ask yourself: "What is my payoff in doing this activity ?"
"How does this fit in with my long term objectives ?"
"Is what I'm doing getting me closer to my objective?"

Make decisions and implement them.
To choose time is to save time.

YOU'RE FIRED! by the Real Boss

Presto -- every customer returns for a second dose of whatever you sell or serve. Is that the reality? Or have you sold them once, and then got fired (and now they're being served by your competition).

You see, people don't stop doing business, they just stop doing business with you. Each of us has lost a customer or ten in our business career. Why? Lots of reasons. We all know what to do, problem is we just don't do it.

Being fired is not just maddening and frustrating, it's also an opportunity. An opportunity to figure out why and fix the problem. Here's a list of 14.5 reasons why customers fire you:

1. Showing no genuine or personal interest. Impersonal service. Insincere people. Commission (only) hungry salespeople.

2. Poor response. Take too long to get back to a customer or service a customer, and they will find someone else. People will even sacrifice quality for speed.

3. Unavailability. People or product. Formula: "Can't get the stuff I need or can't reach the person I want, equals go someplace else."

4. Hard to do business or order. Long waits on hold. People who are not product knowledgeable. Computer voice attendant rather than a real human being to answer the phone, and going through three minutes of crap only to get lost or put on eternal hold. Bye-bye.

5. Unfriendly person on the front line. It never ceases to amaze me how many angry people serve on the front line of multi-million (billion) dollar businesses. The first rule of every corporate policy in America should be one word -- "smile."

6. Poor or rude collection practices. This is a big one. Taking away someone's dignity when collecting a bill is common practice in businesses. Most have never taken the time to point out to collection people that keeping the customer is as important as collecting the money.

7. Over-promising. Customers are like elephants -- they never forget. You over-promise and under-deliver, you lose.

8. Inadequate capability to handle the customer's problem. Poor product knowledge, or too many service problems -- not enough service people. Double jeopardy if you make a lame excuse about it.

9. Too eager to do more business. (Too pushy, too much pressure) -- No one wants to buy more from a high pressure person. Help, don't sell. Create an atmosphere of buying (asking about them) -- not telling about you. Don't be a pest -- have a solid reason for following up.

10. Poor professional package or image. Customer's want to feel that the quality of their business will be reflected by the quality of those they deal with. How's your image? How's your package?

11. Dumb excuses about why you "can't." Customers are calling because they want help. They want help with their situation -- not hear a bunch of bull-ony about yours.

12. Nickel and dime-ing. Charging for every incidental like copies, phone calls, and interest on late payments, puts a bad taste in the customer's mouth.

13. Poor product quality. No matter how much people pay, they expect a quality product. If you're selling price and sacrificing quality, eventually you will lose the business to someone with opposite thinking.

14. Poor service delivery. Everyone expects fast service -- that's right the first time. How's yours? How's the attitude of those who deliver it?

14.5 Poor training. Don't fire the problem employee. Shoot the person who trained them. Poor or ineffective training is the root of customer dissatisfaction. Success tactic: Make "reasons for customer dissatisfaction" the basis for a new training program.

What happens to angry customers? From a variety of reliable research, here is a compilation of interesting statistics.

· 91% who leave will never return.

· 96% who leave won't tell you the real reason they left.

· 80% will do business with you again if their problem is handled quickly, and to their complete satisfaction.

· When the incident is real bad and they leave, stories about what happened will be retold for years.

Interestingly, most of the time when we lose (get fired by) a customer, it always seems to be their fault. I'd love to have a dollar for every customer who was wrongly blamed. Ninety-nine percent of the time it's easy to assess who's to blame -- just look in the mirror. Your mirror.

I'll leave you with two questions -- What are you doing to build loyalty and ensure repeat purchases? Are your customers resigning or re-signing?

Understand dualities

"Life is the coexistence of all opposite values. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, up and down, hot and cold, here and there, light and darkness, birth and death. All experience is by contrast, and one would be meaningless without the other."

-- Deepak Chopra

Life is full of dualities, opposites. Despite their apparent opposition, each extreme in a duality is necessary to fully actualize the other. Each depends on the existence of the other. For example, we cannot know honesty if we don't know deception.

The key is to not resist or suppress the negative. We need to acknowledge its existence, though we may choose not to express it. When we embrace wholeness, we move to a higher perspective.

"The light which man has discovered within himself makes him more aware of the dark; through the good which attracts him, he sees the evil which is the line of least resistance; the activity leading to pain simultaneously permits him to visualize the contrasting pleasure, and thus he experiences something of both hell and heaven."

-- Aart Jurriaanse

KEYS TO FINDING YOUR GENIUS by Jim Rohn

Change Your Beliefs. It is up to you to do the work of changing your beliefs. And when you do you will be opening up new worlds - literally! This month Chris is going to talk about winning the thought battle, which will help you keep negative beliefs out and positive beliefs and thoughts in. Feed your mind with information that will change your belief. By taking part in this One-Year Plan, you are doing just that. But also ask yourself if you are doing that with belief. The truth is that you have an amazing mind with a capacity for learning that is beyond your comprehension. You must believe this. And when you do, you will be unlocking the potential of your mind!

Get the Right Knowledge. Words--if they are not true--are meaningless. I hear children say, "I read it in a book." But is it true? Just because someone says it or writes it, doesn't mean it is true. As learners, we want to get the right knowledge, not just information or opinions. It is our job to seek out information and knowledge and then test it and run it through our minds to see if it is true, and if it can be rightfully applied to our lives in order to make them better and help us succeed. We need to weigh and measure what we learn in order to gain the right knowledge. And when we do, we will be unlocking the potential of our mind!

Become Passionate about Learning. This will take some work, but the only way to do it is to begin learning about things that have an immediate impact in your life. When you learn about a new financial concept that helps you earn money or get out of debt, that will get you fired up. When you learn about a way to communicate that helps you sell more product, that will energize you. When you learn about how to interact with your family in a healthy way and your relationships get better, that will inspire you! Become passionate about learning. And when you do, you will be unlocking the potential of your mind!

Discipline Yourself Through the Hard Work of Study. Learning will take work. Until someone comes up with modules that can plug into your mind and give you instant access to knowledge, you are on your own, and that takes work. The process of learning is a long one. Yes, we can speed it up, but it is still a process of reading, listening, reviewing, repetition, applying the knowledge, experiencing the outcomes, readjusting, etc. Simply put, that takes time. Slowly but surely, when you discipline yourself, you gain knowledge and learn. And when you do, you will be unlocking the potential of your mind!

Learning is possible, no matter what your age. You are never too young or too old. Your mind was created to learn and has a huge capacity to do so. This week, make a commitment to unlock the potential of your mind!

What is your body saying?

"Many people treat their bodies as if they were rented from Hertz -- something they are using to get around in but nothing they genuinely care about understanding."

-- Chungliang Al Huang

"As we explore the extraordinary interplay of energies between the many aspects of our personality -- our needs, unconscious reactions, repressed emotions, aspirations and fears -- with the functioning of our physical system and its capacity to maintain itself, we soon realise how very wise the body is. With its intricately detailed systems and operations it portrays infinite intelligence and compassion, constantly giving us the means to understand ourselves further, to confront issues we are not looking at, and to go beyond that which is holding us back."

-- Debbie Shapiro

Scan your body with your awareness. Are you experiencing any aches and pains? Any stiffness?

What might your body be trying to tell you about how you are living your life?

"Your body is the ground and metaphor of your life, the _expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopedia, your life story. Everything that happens to you is stored and reflected in your body. In the marriage of flesh and spirit divorce is impossible."

-- Gabrielle Roth

"What is always speaking silently is the body."

-- Norman Brown

One year

A year from now you may wish you had started today.

Karen Lamb